Painfully aware of
the fact that EM would not exist, if not for the enigmatic vision of 'Masters of the Universe'
that Gary Cohn gave us all in 1982, we went looking for
the truth concerning exactly what he brought to that commercial juggernaut of
the early to mid-80s!

HMT: Often, when something looks as
simplistic as mini-Eternia (or Mineternia, as I call it), it means there
was a great deal of thought invested in making it seem that way.

GC: [Light chuckle.] Well, it wasn't that way
with writing He-Man [comics].

HMT: Really? I've always
assumed that you had some kind of working cosmology in mind, when you were
writing these incredible comics.

GC: No. These were very
simple characters -- He-Man, Skeletor. There was never a back story for
the comics, because we didn't feel the need to create one. Do you know the
history of He-Man [the toy] -- how it came about?

HMT: Most of it. It was
originally conceived as a Conan: The Barbarian line, right?

GC: Mattel was looking at
the movies. There was another [toy] company doing the Star
Wars toys.

HMT: Kenner.

GC: Kenner. Well, they
were making them a lot of money from them. Then, there was a
little science fiction film that came out called Alien.

At this point,
the journalist in me steps out for a smoke, and the doe-eyed fanboy is too
awe-struck to take any notes and trying desperately not to blow this.

What Mr.
Cohn laid on me about MOTU's beginnings he heard directly from Mattel's people
and most of it is pretty well known already -- to hardcore fans, at least. Mattel got
licensed to do the Alien toyline, and before you knew it, big, ugly hunks of
plastic were being shipped off to toy retailers all over the States -- the Alien
action figure. They were taller than nearly every other action figure
you'd collected up to this point. In
spite of high hopes that movie tie-in lightning would strike twice, Mattel's
Alien line never took off the way Kenner's Star Wars toys did.

It tanked, and
when the proposed Conan The Barbarian toyline promised a similar marketing
disaster, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe were born.

GC: Have you ever seen
Conan
The Barbarian?

HMT: Oh yeah. There was quite a bit of
nudity in Conan, wasn't it?

GC: Mm-hmm.

HMT: Like that scene, where Conan
prostitutes himself to this sorceress in the desert. Remember -- there was
this chick he meets before he hooks up with Sandahl Bergman?

GC: This was not a children's
movie.

HMT: [Laughing.] What did Mattel's marketing team
do, when they saw this?

GC: Mattel thought it had another
Alien [toyline] on its hands. Well, they had to do something. They
changed the names. The colors.

HMT: And the Masters of the
Universe was born.

GC: [Chuckles.] He-Man.
Beast Man. Skeletor ...

HMT: This was the biggest thing
to happen to Mattel since G.I. Joe, right?

GC: They believed it might do
well for a few years.

HMT: You're kidding! Only a
few years? I guess Mattel figured it wasn't going to top STAR WARS.

GC: And Mattel missed out on the
[licensing] to do the Star Wars toys.

HMT: I think Kenner did a pretty
good job on those toys. I had most of the them. Clearly, Masters
borrowed from that movie and a few others though, wouldn't you say?

GC: Absolutely.

HMT: There
seem to be a lot of mythical and fantasy themes in the early MOTU minicomics.
Where does all of that come from?

GC: I came at this from an
American popular culture studies background -- it's what I majored in at Bolling Green
(College), back in Ohio. Have you heard of popular culture studies?

HMT: I think I've heard of it,
but college is a little blurry for me. What is it, exactly?

GC: In popular culture studies, you're
dealing with symbolic ideas in popular culture -- how they are served to the
public in a way that influences the public psyche.

[Mr. Cohn gives me a little history of
American popular culture studies, as it is taught in universities. It's actually
rather interesting, but I'm so damned starstruck and desperately trying not to
sound nervous that I scribble it down in very poor detail. Sorry.]

HMT: So, it's like the study of
what ideas we respond to .. and why? I would guess this is what the
marketing folks are working with, when they're conceiving an ad campaign.

GC: That had an effect on how I
wrote the [mini-] comics.

HMT: How did you get this gig?

GC: I got into the business in
my early thirties. I think I was about thirty or thirty-one, when I
started getting [comic book jobs] consistently. A lot of the guys I knew
starting out were younger, some of them right of high school.

HMT: Was this like some kind of internship?

GC: We
would drop by the offices and see if the editors had any work they wanted to use
us on. Mark Texeira and I were in Dave Manak's office, when he introduced
us. Anyway, we found out he needed a writer for these mini comic books
that DC was producing for Mattel.

HMT: Did you know anything about
He-Man then?

GC: I'm not sure. I might
have heard of it by then, but I don't think so. We got this packet
explaining who [the Masters of the Universe] were. When we read the names,
He-Man, Ram-Man. Skeletor -- then,
there was Man-E-uh .. ?

HMT: Man-E-Faces.

GC: Man-E-Faces.
Man-At-Arms! [Chuckles.]

HMT: [Restrained laughter.]

GC: Well, it was hard not to
laugh. We couldn't believe how little thought had been put into creating
this stuff, but it was work. It didn't pay much, but it was work.

HMT: Well, there's like a
mainstream of Masters fans -- then, you've got these little factions.
There was a second He-Man toon called New Adventures of He-Man -- you've
got fans of that.

GC: Never heard of it.

HMT: Then, you've got fans of the new cartoon and the new comic
book. There are She-Ra fans. There're fans of the minicomics you did, .. but
the fans of the Filmation cartoon are the largest group. They call
themselves 'classic fans'.

GC: I don't think I ever caught
one episode of the cartoon.

HMT: The big difference between the TV cartoon and the minicomic is that, in the toon,
He-Man is a cocky teenager, who changes into a hero, .. kinda' like in Shazam!
In the early minicomics, He-Man was a Conan-like warrior .. from a jungle tribe,
and there was a really sorta' dark, brutal edge to those stories.

GC: And there are websites about
the minicomics. [?]

HMT: It's a growing fandom
online. Actually, we've been here all along. It's the oldest of all
of them, .. but it's only recently finding a voice and a sense of community.
The Mini-eternian period, which is the one you and Mark Texeira created, was
really brief, like one year.

GC: 1982 ...

HMT: 81, .. 82 -- yeah. So, some minicomics fans celebrate
that by writing short fiction based on the concepts the minis made so cool.
It's how some of us are keeping it alive.

GC: The two swords concept was interesting.

HMT: I thought so. How did that
idea come about?

Next month, Mr.
Cohn reveals the answer to the mystery of the two swords, as well as a little
known mystery involving a blonde with a big pony. He also gives us some
insight into what his upcoming book
will be about.

*It
should be noted that He-Man Tales was the FIRST website to exhibit the rare
Tale of Teela and The Power of Point Dread! minicomics online,
in their entirety. It should also be noted that
EM invented the minicomic reader featured on this site; though, you
will find similar readers in the minicomics sections of other MOTU fan
sites.